


Impure Hearts Stumble

by geckoholic



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The first time she sees Jupiter, in a blurry photo on a tiny screen, she's both elated and immensely, inexplicably angry.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impure Hearts Stumble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> This little thing was ~totally supposed to be shippy, but adamantly refused to go there. Sigh. Stubborn fucker. As it is, sported by your suggestion of what it must've been like to grow up with a mother who was millenia old. It's also kinda weird. Which I should've anticipated, seeing how that's what tends to happen when I listen to odd trance remixes while writing. Oh well. 
> 
> Read over by andibeth82, who I'm dragging into all my shiny new fandoms. Muahahaha. ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Guiding Light" by Muse.

When your life spans millennia, childhood makes for a vanishingly small part of it. The idea that it has any impact whatsoever on the person you're going to be seems almost laughable, held to such a scale, Kalique always thought. She grew up as the middle child of a very important, very _busy_ woman. Seraphi loved her children. No one would ever question that, least of all Kalique herself. It's just that a year or two didn't matter too much to her, could pass without her noticing. She'd bring a five-year-old to bed, go on a business trip, then another, would have to inspect a planet or three, and she'd come back to a seven-year-old who cried at the sight of her, for reasons she must not have understood nor cared to understand. In hindsight, to Kalique, it feels like she only ever saw her mother in passing. But it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't _still_ matter. 

It does. 

 

*** 

 

The first time she sees Jupiter, in a blurry photo on a tiny screen, she's both elated and immensely, inexplicably angry. Of course it's not the first time she's confronted with an recurrence – although they're rare, she's old enough to have gotten somewhat bored by the idea – but usually it's people she met once, maybe twice, made small talk with at parties or negotiated with for some reason or other. This is _her mother_. The woman she has spent her entire life missing, even before her death. Kalique knows her brothers are, at this very moment, racing to get their hands on Jupiter Jones. She will not participate in their race. She will not care. 

Naturally, fate then offers to drop the woman who wears her mother's face on Kalique's doorstep, because fate is funny like that. And Kalique is too much of an Abrasax to decline. 

 

***

 

Seraphi Abrasax loved her children. The thing is, and this didn't occur to Kalique until long after her mother's death, that she didn't necessarily _like_ them very much. 

The slight sneer Jupiter wears while she watches the opulent halls, the statue, the pomp and splendor, matches Seraphi's default expression to a tee. Above all, she taught Kalique to question everything, don't believe anything or trust anyone until they have proven themselves. The very fact that Jupiter still radiates disbelief, even as she stands in a space palace with a woman she just watched step out of a regeneration bath, already makes her more like Seraphi than she will ever know. 

 

***

 

Jupiter's mistrust – her insistence that, even though recurrences are an established part of a society so old and complex she couldn't begin to comprehend, it's all just random coincidence and no bearing on who she is or what she'll do – is what causes Kalique to seek her out time and time again. A title comes with duties and responsibilities, and with Balem out of the picture and Titus brandished by his betrayal, it's only so long before Jupiter accepts her invitation to learn what she needs to know about the vast world she's now expected to navigate. She's wary, but she's not dumb. 

Kalique teaches and explains. Jupiter listens. They're mother and daughter, de facto and in reverse. They're not. They know each other. They don't. It's confusing and yet it makes perfect sense.


End file.
